Any love for Hexen on here?

[Xeogred]

Don't remind me of Thief!
(couldn't get both the original and Gold versions to work on Win7 64bit... ugh, I'm dying to play those games but I just might skip 1 and play 2 since it works perfectly fine. And trust me I tried like everything, lol).

[mugenmidget]

N64 version was awesome! It's probably my favorite way to play co-op. I tried to play some of this through Skulltag recently, but the co-op support isn't quite there yet. The best way to play it in cooperative mode that I found was shared by someone at the Something Awful forums:

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showth ... rid=117784

I'd like to suggest that the HeXeN section gets some more information put into it. Mostly because a few friends and I decided to replay Hexen recently, and found out that every single port has it's own problems if you plan on playing it co-op.

jDoom was the first choice as it's what we used years ago, only to find it's developed a new bug: The clients always use multiple items hitting the use key once, regardless of key repeat settings. This makes HeXeN, unfortunately, unplayable.

Skull Tag worked great.. until we realized we couldn't save or load.

zDoom was having it's own set of connection issues every level load attempt.

... so ultimately, here's what we found works best:

To run HeXeN in co-op:

1) Get GZDoom and setup a command line for hosting or clients. I'd recommend you add -extratic to help stability. Some examples:
gzdoom.exe -host X (number of players) -netmode 1 -port xxxx -extratic -skill 5 +playerclass Cleric
gzdoom.exe -join xx.xxx.xxx.xxx:xxxx +playerclass Cleric -extratic

Also every single client and the host will need to add -loadgame saveX.zds to their path if you plan on loading a game, and make sure to load the same save game.

2) Make sure all players connect in the same order. If players connect in a different order when picking up a load game, the classes will get scrambled and you'll end up with an odd mess of people who look like Mages, but have mixed weapon sets. Also whoever is hosting will have to host for the rest of the campaign, since they will always be player 0, unless you want to shuffle classes - even then, I am not 100% sure you'll be problem free. It's better to designate a host.

3) When one player saves, no matter what they name the save file, it will save on everyone's system in the exact same slot. When you want to load a save game, everyone will need to add -loadgame save#.zds and make sure that they are all loading the same save to their command line, client and host. Otherwise it will not function.

4) Dying fixes positional desyncs generally. This most importantly includes every single time you go through to another hub. Fortunately you can enter the gameplay options and disable losing anything when you die - so set this (and team damage) and kill your partners to resync them with the host if you get this.

5) I'd recommend each player pick a save slot and save frequently, insuring you have a backup if something goes wrong. This can be a really long game and restarting via map warps annoyingly wipes out your inventory, which is key to Hexen.

... anyway, that's the guide we found to play the game. We're about halfway through and finally have the kinks ironed out. I'll note that we found all this through very, very long and painful trial & error which is why I wanted to share it here, because Hexen is an awesome game to play in c-op but man these issues were annoying. In particular, the connection order one, since we saved after we broke it, and had to restart the game.

It's pretty easy to get going if you know those tricks though, so you don't find yourself trying 50 things to simply enter new hubs, or try tons of combinations to figuring out why your mage suddenly looks like a cleric that is packing the Mage's first weapon and Cleric's second. I highly endorse checking HeXeN out, it's a ton of fun (and if you never played co-op before, it adds co-op specific team support scrolls to help your allies, which is pretty neat!) and can actually be pretty drat difficult in nightmare.. if you play with all three classes you'll notice each class gets specific counter-enemies, so a lot of strategy is involved you just don't see in most Doom FPS or 2.5D games in general.

I hope this helps somebody try it out.

So you can get it working more or less but there's still a few issues. If anyone knows of a better method for playing this on PCs, I'd love to hear it.

[Ack]

Hexen was one of the great N64 multiplayer games I used to play in high school. 4-player deathmatch was awesome, with everyone scampering for their best weapons immediately, stealing pieces from other players. There were some good times. If you get the chance, try the multiplayer.

[Anayo]

Hexen's OK, but I got lost while playing. I mean I literally reached a point in the game where I had no idea where to go next. I think I enjoyed Duke 3D and Shadow Warrior more for their sense of humor.

[Anthony817]

I also had Hexen on Saturn in the mid 90's, such an amazing game.

If any of you have the Dreamcast, get the homebrew full PC port. It is the best console version of the game period.

You can also use the mouse and keyboard and the VGA box, so it is every bit as amazing looking as the PC version.

[Curlypaul]

@Anayo - Yeah its still got the rat in maze kind of design that DOOM has.

@Anthony817 - Never knew there was a DC port, thats awesome, I'll have to have a look at that. I dont have a mouse for the dreamcast, I presume its still playable with the controller?

[Xeogred]

Hexen's OK, but I got lost while playing. I mean I literally reached a point in the game where I had no idea where to go next. I think I enjoyed Duke 3D and Shadow Warrior more for their sense of humor.

Funny to get lost in Hexen, knowing id (I'm just guessing here) I'd imagine their level design would be easier to navigate and figure out than some of the Build engine games, least for me. DN3D and the bits of Shadow Warrior that I played were damn confusing sometimes, lol. Lots of weird trial and error things in those games.

[WhiteMagicRaven]

I am very love hexen